


We Can Go Anywhere

by leominoris



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24951853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leominoris/pseuds/leominoris
Summary: "Even if one day we end up with soulmates who don't care a single bit about space," Renjun speaks into the resulting silence, "Let's still discover aliens together one day, okay?"
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno, Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin, Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 140
Collections: Haechie Birthday Bash





	We Can Go Anywhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Milival](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milival/gifts).



> for val, as a thank you for organizing the haechie bday bash!
> 
> surprise (but not really), thank you for all of your hard work to organize this fic exchange! you know who i am but i'll still enjoy the anonymity of it for as long as it'll last.  
> it's not much but i hope it's just enough to bring a smile to your face today!
> 
> if you catch any tense mistakes please feed them to the monster under the bed, it's past midnight and i'm (as always) doing a subpar job at proofreading things.
> 
> the title is borrowed from stray kids' _astronaut_!

Get your backpack ready,  
Search for the stars right now,  
We'll be back in a bit, just hold on!

— Astronaut, Stray Kids

  
  


It starts as a dream on Renjun's bedroom floor, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars scattered across the ceiling on New Year's Eve, listening to the muffled countdown on the TV downstairs through the open door.   
One mentions E.T., the next argues that  _ E.T. was so obviously fake because, c'mon, look at him, aliens surely look a lot cooler than that _ , someone accidentally elbows someone else into the ribs and a scuffle erupts. They end up in a heap, limbs thrown over each other carelessly because they know it's okay, the warmth is comfortable, familiar.

"Even if one day we end up with soulmates who don't care a single bit about space," Renjun speaks into the resulting silence, "Let's still discover aliens together one day, okay?"  
"I doubt you'd ever get a soulmate that doesn't care about aliens," Donghyuck teases.    
"What's the point in having one if they don't like what you like?"   
"I wish we could just be each other's soulmates," Jaemin sighs. "And then we could build a rocket and go to space and not worry about leaving anyone behind."   
Jeno laughs.   
"We'd be space mates!"

"… was that supposed to be funny?"   
"Donghyuckie!"   
"What?!"   
"You're most definitely not my soulmate! My soulmate would've gotten the joke!"   
"You say that like I'd want to be your soulmate!"   
"Shut up! I can't hear the countdown anymore!"   
"Oh wait, they're clapping–"   
"–Oof! Ouch, Jaemin, you're  _ heavy _ , get off me–"   
"It's midnight, you guys! Happy new year!"   
"Happy new year!"   
"It'll be a happy new year once you get  _ off _ me!"   
  


🦊

  
  


According to the laws of the world, everyone has a soulmate. Someone who understands your soul, someone who knows you better than anyone else, someone who matches so perfectly with you that it feels like they've always been part of your life regardless of when you meet. They make you a better person because they make you want to be better.    
The science of it is still spotty at best, something about how brains 

Jaemin believes in it with wide-eyed wonder and excitement, Jeno with a gentle sense of duty. Donghyuck thinks it's bollocks and Renjun isn't quite sure what to think. The world is very big and there is something incredibly unfair about having such bad odds at ever meeting the one right person for you but the promise of someone who knows your heart inside out is comforting and when he listens to the few people he knows have met their soulmates in their lifetime, his grandmother being one of them, he feels a gut-wrenching sense of longing.

_ I want something like that too _ , the right side of his brain whispers.    
_ Why would you of all the people get that when so few do _ ? Replies the left.

Reports say that you'll know when you meet them but, most importantly, your soul mark will show over your heart when the time is right. The statement in itself is incredibly vague and that alone is half the reason Donghyuck vehemently refuses to believe in what he calls a "naïve take at capitalism scamming romantics into thinking love is predestined".    
Renjun thinks he's right, though. What  _ is _ the right time to meet your soulmate?   
Is there ever a bad one?

If he ever is to have a soulmate, here's what Renjun would hope they'd be like:

Witty and observant like Donghyuck. Unafraid to speak their mind even if he disagrees but not too stubborn as not to be open for beliefs outside of theirs.   
Patient and reliable like Jeno. A rock in an otherwise stormy sea, someone he could call at two AM in a crisis knowing he'd be there.   
Loving and brave like Jaemin. Someone unashamed of feeling, someone open with their emotions and willing to wait for Renjun to figure out how to express his own.

"Your expectations are ridiculous," Yiren tells him. She's his girlfriend, though it's more of a temporary arrangement.  _ Our dress rehearsal _ , that's what she calls it. For once they find the people they're  _ truly _ meant to be with. Neither of them really know when that will be but they're both twenty and too pretty to be sitting on their asses waiting for life to serve them their forever partners without at least getting in some kissing practice beforehand.

Yiren is cute but she's most definitely not Renjun's soulmate. Not an ounce of care for aliens, though she likes the space as an aesthetic concept, which is worth something already.    
It's okay, they're not keen on staying forever together. For now, until they figured out how they like to be kissed and touched and having someone who is socially obliged to go to the cinema when no one else wants to see whatever niche movie they're interested in is enough already.

"Excuse you, I think my expectations are just fine!"   
"Of course you'd say that." Waving him off, Yiren takes another sip of her latte.   
"You have all three of them. The problem starts when you need one person to be the best of all of them at once."

Her words keep echoing in his head even long after they part ways for the day.

  
  


🐻

  
  


Donghyuck is the first to find a soul mark over his heart. It's a pretty thing, black swirls circling the black dot underneath which his heart beats, almost like the rings of a planet.   
It also launches him into an existential crisis for the next fifteen minutes because of course it  _ had _ to be him, the only person he knows in his extended circle of friends who doesn't actually believe in all of that esoteric nonsense, who is the one to find a soulmate.

Well. In theory.   
In practice, things are quite a bit more complicated.

The thing is, he finds it in the evening when he's about to go take a shower. There's no way of telling when during the day it showed up and his sisters are no help when they sit down and try to help him retrace his steps. It could've happened anytime, anywhere.

So here he is, confused and tired with water uncomfortably dripping down his still wet hair and into his collar. His older little sister snaps a picture of his now soul-marked torso for him to send his friends without him looking like he's trying to excuse casual bathroom mirror half-nudes and then he does just that: he takes the picture, drops it into their Kakaotalk chat and waits.

It doesn't take long for his phone to jump to life with a soft chime.

**Lee Jeno** : omo   
**haechan** : yeah that's worth a lot. thank you. i know exactly what i'm gonna do.   
**Lee Jeno** : don't be an ass :( i just didn't know what to say   
**pacific ocean shoulder gangster** : r u for real?   
**haechan** : i wish i were fucking joking, believe me  
**pacific ocean shoulder gangster** : who is it????   
**haechan** : BITCH IF I KNEW   
**haechan** : i only saw today when i was abt to go shower   
**Lee Jeno** : oooh yikes…   
**pacific ocean shoulder gangster** : lmao talk about bad luck   
**haechan** : HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIND MY SOULMATE AGAIN LIKE THIS???   
**haechan** : also where is jaemin when i need him mOST doesn't he know everything abt soulmates?!   
**Lee Jeno** : nana has volleyball practice! you should ask him later!   
**haechan** : oh believe me i will   
**pacific ocean shoulder gangster** : you make it sound like you're gonna make him pay for you finding your soulmate   
**haechan** : I MIGHT JUST   
**Lee Jeno** : no fighting :((((((

He links out after that. It's not like there's much else that is going to come out of Renjun and Jeno slipping off into an exchange of only vaguely funny jokes and Jaemin, who might enable them but would also know what to do, isn't available yet.

Great.

He takes the exact same picture he just sent his friends and sends it to Mark instead, who very aptly reacts with a blushing emoji first and then tells Donghyuck that he doesn't really get why he'd send him nudes. Sometimes Donghyuck wishes his best friend weren't quite as innocent.

"I didn't send you that picture for you to think that I'm trying to awkwardly sext with you," is the first thing he tells Mark when he took his call.   
"Why else would you send me a photo of your naked torso?!"   
"How the hell can you date Yuta and still be scared of saying  _ tiddies _ , Mark Lee?"   
"I'm  _ not _ scared of saying– uh…"   
"I'm waiting."

On the other end of the line, Mark coughs in embarrassment.   
"It doesn't matter! I'm sure you didn't send me that pic to make me say t– anyway."   
"No shit, Sherlock."   
"So why– wait. Wait, hang on."   
Donghyuck hears how he's put on speakers and assumes Mark is opening up their chat again to actually look at his photo and not just open and close it again at light speed, squawking at the flash of, the horror,  _ naked chest _ .

Then, a gasp.   
"Ah, I see you've noticed," Donghyuck deadpans.   
"Dude! That's– like–  _ dude _ !"   
"Yeah, you just said that."   
"But I thought you don't think you'll ever meet your soulmate!"   
"I thought it was a fucking capitalist myth!"   
"You really gotta stop hanging around Doyoung so much– wait, back on track. Soul mark."   
A giggle interrupted Mark words.   
"Hehe. Soul  _ Mark _ ."   
"Oh my god."   
"Sorry. You were saying?"

Donghyuck wishes they could be face to face but Mark lives on the other end of Seoul in this chaotic sharehouse that Donghyuck is never sure he envies or pities him for.   
It'd all be so much easier. He'd badger Mark for a hug and Mark would resist for five minutes before seeing just how miserable Donghyuck is and then he'd cave. And Donghyuck would get his cuddles  _ and _ the boost of knowing he still has his best friend wrapped around his little finger.

"Do you know who it is?"   
"Nope. Just saw it now, before taking a shower."   
Mark whistles.   
"Fuuuuck."   
"Yeah."

Donghyuck ends the call pointedly ignoring how he still has no idea how to start uncovering the mystery of his soul mate because if he doesn't he's not sure he'll be able to keep the faint spark of comfort talking to Mark has left him with.

  
  


🐶

  
  


Jeno knows exactly when his soul mark starts showing. He does because he hears Renjun's soft gasp when the first faint traces of black start swirling over his skin. Jaemin doesn't see it right away because he's still busy towelling at Jeno's freshly re-toned platinum blonde hair and Donghyuck nearly drops his bag of chips when he re-enters the tiny bathroom in Jeno's flat that most definitely was not made for four growing men between nineteen and twenty.

"Well, fuck," Renjun matters, his slim, elegant fingers splaying over the skin of his chest. They feel so warm they might leave char marks behind, a little crown of rays crowding around his palm, a second soul mark right there below the one that's just showed up.  
Jeno knows it's bad when he hears. Renjun rarely curses openly like that.  
Jaemin hums absent-mindedly, the sound quizzical and soft and so close to Jeno's ear that it sends a pleasant shiver down his back.  
Donghyuck takes the towel from him and pulls him to the side so he can see too.

It takes Jeno another five minutes for the reality of it to settle in. A soul mark. Right there, on his chest, stark black against the pale tone of his skin. And the only real explanation is that his soulmate must be here with him in this tiny, cramped bathroom where they've sprayed lukewarm water all over the tile floor because they got distracted by their bickering.

"Jeno?" Jaemin asks worriedly.   
"Take your shirts off," Jeno says though it's not really anything close to a reply.   
Renjun makes a soft sound of confusion, Donghyuck scoffs.   
"If you wanted to see my glorious washboard abs, Jeno, I'm afraid you're too late. It's June now and they've melted away, drip drip, like chocolate in the sun–"   
"Just take your shirt off."

The stern reiteration is what has his friends jumping into action. Jaemin is the only one who has the sense to catch Renjun's shirt in mid-air and toss it out the open bathroom door so it won't land on the wet floor, his own following suit. Donghyuck goes from respectably clothed to partially nude within a heartbeat and Jeno isn't quite sure whether he just wasn't paying attention to the progression of it or if his friend really undressed this fast (and what that should or shouldn't tell him).

In all of his twenty years, Lee Jeno has never really thought that he'd get to a point where he, Renjun, Jaemin and Donghyuck would stand in a wonky circle in a tiny bathroom staring at each other's soul marks bloom on their chests.

"Wait– it's supposed to  _ move _ ?!" Donghyuck asks horrifiedly, clawing at where the black lines of his own soul mark writhe on his chest. As if it were resonating with Jeno's own.   
Renjun seems more confused at how he has a soul mark to begin with, though his is only starting to show now, still more grey than black, the colour bleeding to the surface of his skin as if it were only showing now that it got caught.   
Jaemin seems less fazed, not paying the dizzyingly fast spinning of his own solar system soul mark much attention. Instead, his eyes are trained on Jeno, almost uncomfortably so.

"I don't get it," Jeno whispers hoarsely.   
"I have a  _ soul mark _ ," Renjun not-replies, looking up from his chest. His fingers still try to keep up with every spot above his heart where a new inky flower starts to bloom.   
"It's fucking  _ moving _ , you guys!"

All his life, Jeno expected his soul mate in the way one would look at marriage and children and decide that yes, that seemed appropriate. Sensible. As expected.   
Two soulmates pushes the bounds of that sort of thinking. Three feels like it should be scientifically unreal.

_ I wish we could just be each other's soulmates _ , thirteen-year-old Jaemin's echoes in his head. The soul mark on his chest, a burst of briars radiating from his heart, sways fondly at the memory.

"Jeno!" Renjun exclaims, looking up with wide eyes, lips forming a perfect circle.   
"Jeno!" Donghyuck whines, confusion painted plainly all over his face as his soul mark vibrates in tune with his voice.   
Jaemin says nothing but the spin of the tiny soul mark planets on his chest seem to whisper it regardlessly,  _ Jeno _ .

With a confused sob, Jeno crumbles, falling forward into the nearest warm body that will hold him up. He feels the slide of skin against his own as one, two, three pairs of arms wrap around him, around each other.

They're four mostly-grown shirtless men in this tiny, somewhat-flooded bathroom. Jeno's hair still smells pleasantly of the purple shampoo Renjun picked and Jaemin massaged into his scalp while they listened to Donghyuck's latest anecdotes from his part-time job.

And as relief starts to wash over Jeno, pulling at the first strands of his confusion, he can't help but think about how strange of a place this is to find a soul mate, let alone three.

  
  


🐰

  
  


Jaemin has always known that he would find his soul mate. He dreamt of it once as a child, summer-tan skin, moon-sickled eyes, a high, melodic laugh. For a long time he'd just assumed all of it would come wrapped up into one.

Instead, this is what he gets:

Lee Jeno, shy and teary-eyed after his mother drops him off at the daycare. He's exactly the same height as Jeno and they're both four and miss their mothers and their warm, slightly sticky fingers fit together so well that it becomes hard to let go again.

Huang Renjun, who thinks everything that starts with a statement about his height is a challenge. They're both seven when they meet and they're in neighbouring classrooms but Renjun says something that sounds like "eggplant spaceship" and despite none of that being what he  _ meant _ they end lunch break with the drawing of a very eggplant-y spaceship indeed.

Lee Donghyuck, long-legged and big-mouthed and unafraid to scrape his knees. Jaemin and Renjun meet him after class when they find him perched on a windowsill far too high for a boy of eight and they have to call Mister Changmin, the friendly janitor, to coax him out of his hiding place. Donghyuck shares that he yelled at a group of bullies and made a strategic retreat to the highest place his adrenaline-addled brain would take him. It's a very odd thing to be charmed by, but at eight, Jaemin is used to odd.

It's a lot different from what he envisioned as a child. Less space on their shared mattress, more unwashed dishes despite him having done them the night before. It's picking up after Donghyuck when he grows tired of clothes and bickering with Renjun over what laundry detergent to buy and having Jeno wake him up at two in the morning because he wants egg-fried rice.   
It's having to think of a way to dodge talking about his soulmates during family dinners because grandfather won't accept Jaemin not getting married to a sweet, friendly girl, let alone three young men of varying artistic backgrounds. It's having to scrape together their part-time job salaries right out of uni because they can't possibly stand yet another year living apart but real estate in Seoul is hell on earth, especially for places that offer enough space for four people and the three cats Jeno brings home from the street.

But it's also waking up to three heartbeats in tune with his. It's getting back to their place after a long day at work and knowing that he's  _ home _ . It's baking with Renjun at unholy hours just so they can surprise Donghyuck with a birthday cake, it's going to Busan and having a good time despite the pouring rain because he knows he's there with the people he cares most about.   
It's meeting Donghyuck's mother and Jeno's father and Renjun's not-really-big sister and be treated like family, it's raising Bongsik, Seol and Nal like their own children.   
It's asking for what hair colour he should do next and getting  _ pink _ from Renjun,  _ blue _ from Donghyuck and  _ jaemin :((( please give your scalp a break _ from Jeno.

It's watching Jeno and Donghyuck kiss and sharing a look with Renjun because they both understand that flash of heat in the pit of their stomachs, the sheer want that comes with seeing them like this, it's feeling the others' phantom hands on his skin when he feels lonely and needy during business trips abroad. It's attempts at dirty talk in their group chat getting interrupted by someone else trying to compile a grocery list because  _ dammit, guys, some people are trying not to pop a boner in the office at twenty past two in the afternoon _ .

Having four soulmates is nothing like Jaemin expected and everything he hoped it would be and the longer he goes, the more he wants to believe that they weren't soulmates from birth but that they  _ made _ themselves each other's.

He thinks of New Year's lying in a heap on Renjun's childhood bedroom floor, ten years old and knobby-kneed and hoping for aliens and eggplant spaceships and dreaming of galaxies to explore together.

"So, when are we building that rocket of ours?" He asks. The mattress bounces under his body and immediately Donghyuck slips his arms around him and pulls him close. He kisses first and answers second.   
"We're building a rocket?"  
"Don't tell me you forget," Jeno muses. The smile is plain as day in his voice even if Jaemin can't see it and his big, warm hand finds the dip of Jaemin's spine where he hurt his back during volleyball practice six years ago.   
"Our rocket to go see E.T.," Renjun informs Donghyuck primly and burrows himself into Jaemin's arms. "You're right, I'm still waiting for that extraterrestrial date of mine."  
"Hey!" Donghyuck wails and tries to swat blindly around Jaemin's body at Renjun.   
"You have three perfectly fine human boyfriends, stop dreaming of alien lovers when we're right here!"   
Renjun cackles and dodges and the slaps meet Jaemin's chest instead. They hurt just enough to feel make his soul mark tremble in resonance. He's gotten better at making it out, relishes in the warmth of it.   
"All I'm saying is I want a date where you take me to see the stars!"   
"Omo," Jeno hums amusedly. Donghyuck smacks him too.

Four is a lot of people to cram onto one bed so they can look at the glow-in-the-dark-speckled ceiling together but if you ask Jaemin there's no better way to dream of space.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on: [twitter](http://twitter.com/lovecherriemoji) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/lovecherriemotion)


End file.
